This new and expanded edition of Dragon in the Tropics-the widely acclaimed account of how president Hugo Chávez (19992013) revamped Venezuela’s political economy-examines the electoral decline of Chavismo after Chavez’s death and the policies adopted by his successor, Nicolás Maduro, to cope with the economic chaos inherited from previous radical populist policies. Corrales and Penfold argue that Maduro has had to struggle with the inherent contradictions of a large and heteroge...

How Nicolás Maduro reinvented authoritarianism for the twenty-first centurVenezuela, which once enjoyed periods of democratically elected governments in the latter half of the twentieth century, has descended into autocratic rule, coupled with economic collapse. In his new book, Autocracy Rising, veteran scholar of Latin American politics Javier Corrales explores how and why this happened.Corrales focuses on two themes: party systems and institutional capacity. He argues that Venez...

The study of institutions, a core concept in comparative politics, has produced many rich and influential theories on the economic and political effects of institutions, yet it has been less successful at theorizing their origins. In Fixing Democracy, Javier Corrales develops a theory of institutional origins that concentrates on constitutions and levels of power within them. He reviews numerous Latin American constituent assemblies and constitutional amendments to explore why som...

Oil makes up one-third of Venezuela's entire GDP, and the United States is far and away Venezuela's largest trading partner. Relations between Venezuela and the United States, traditionally close for most of the last two centuries, began to fray as the end of the Cold War altered the international environment.U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s explores relations between these two countries since 1999, when Hugo Chavez came to office and proceeded to change Venezuela'...

Latin American Politics, Second Edition is a thematic introduction to the political systems of all 20 Latin American countries. The approach is self-consciously comparative and encourages students to develop stronger comparative analysis skills through such topics as history, violence, democracy, and political economy. Fully updated and revised, this second edition also includes a new chapter on parties, elections, and movements. Each chapter is now framed by a prologue and an epi...

Today all would agree that Mexico and the United States have never been closer--that the fates of the two republics are inextricably intertwined. It has become an intimate part of life in almost every community in the United States, through immigration, imported produce, business ties, or illegal drugs. It is less a neighbor than a sibling; no matter what our differences, it is intricately a part of our existence. In this outstanding contribution to Oxford's acclaimed series, What Ever...

Highlighting eleven different topics in separate chapters, the thematic approach of Latin American Politics offers students the conceptual tools they need to analyze the political systems of all twenty Latin American nations. Such a structure makes the book self-consciously comparative, allowing students to become stronger analysts of comparative politics and better political scientists in general.

In the past two decades, democratically elected executives across the world have used their popularity to push for legislation that, over time, destroys systems of checks and balances, hinders free and fair elections, and undermines political rights and civil liberties. Using and abusing institutions and institutional reform, some executives have transformed their countries' democracies into competitive authoritarian regimes. Others, however, have failed to erode democracy. What explains t...

During the years between 1980 and 1999, in the midst of war and economic crisis, a record number of women were elected to national legislatures in Central American republics. Can quantitative increases in the presence of elected women in Central America produce qualitative political changes?In this detailed study, Michelle A. Saint-Germain and Cynthia Chavez Metoyer explore the reasons for this unprecedented political rise of women, and what effect it has had on the region. Focusin...

Claims that immigrants take Americans' jobs, are a drain on the American economy, contribute to poverty and inequality, destroy the social fabric, challenge American identity, and contribute to a host of social ills by their very existence are openly discussed and debated at all levels of society. Chomsky dismantles twenty of the most common assumptions and beliefs underlying statements like "I'm not against immigration, only illegal immigration" and challenges the misinformation ...

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has kowtowed to it. But what do most Americans really know ab...

In 1700, Latin America and British North America were roughly equal in economic terms. Yet over the next three centuries, the United States gradually pulled away from Latin America, and today the gap between the two is huge. Why did this happen? Was it culture? Geography? Economic policies? Natural resources? Differences in political development? The question has occupied scholars for decades, and the debate remains a hot one. In Falling Behind, Francis Fukuyama gathers together s...